Mediagazer: What's New in Digital Scholarship: Gendered sourcing on Twitter and the allure of following the crowd (John Wihbey/Nieman Journalism Lab)

8:40 PM ET, November 29, 2013

Top News:

Mathew Ingram / Gigaom:

This online journalism startup raised $1.7M in crowdfunding and you've never heard of it — We've been writing a lot lately about online journalism startups like Matter — which was acquired by Medium and just dropped its paywall — and NSFW Corp., the Vegas-based venture that just merged with Pando Daily.

Ernst-Jan Pfauth / The Next Web: How we turned a world record in journalism crowdfunding into an actual publication

Alyson Shontell / Business Insider:

Suddenly, Upworthy Clones Are Everywhere And Millions Of People Are Reading Them — On March 26, 2012, a new media startup called Upworthy launched. Now it has 50 million monthly unique readers. — Almost all of its readers come from Facebook. The headlines, which Upworthy's editors toil over …

Discussion: Gigaom, @zimbalist, @noahmittman, @henrikbennetsen, @bankoff and PandoDaily

Katherine Miller / BuzzFeed:

The Right Wing Has Its Own Upworthy And You Won't Believe How Well It's Doing — The low-profile Independent Journal Review could be the conservative answer to the social sharing shift. — A newer conservative website, run by insiders but with an outsider appeal, has rocketed past …

Roy Greenslade / Guardian:

100 leading figures urge newspaper publishers to accept royal charter — More than 100 prominent people from literature, the arts, science, academia, human rights and the law have signed a declaration urging newspaper and magazine publishers to embrace the royal charter system of press regulation.

Discussion: Press Gazette, HoldTheFrontPage, BelfastTelegraph.co.uk, Spectator, Guardian, Kirk LaPointe's …, @paul__johnson, Guardian, BBC and Guardian

The Huffington Post UK: British Newspaper Editors Described As ‘Angry Donkeys’ By Former Sun Boss David Yelland

Alastair Reid / Journalism.co.uk:

Tech.eu launches to report on European tech industry — The new digital publication seeks to cover ‘unreported’ stories from across the continent and sector — Read more — Other top stories — Also on Journalism.co.uk...

Discussion: Tech.eu

Edward Wong / New York Times:

Bloomberg Code Keeps Articles From Chinese Eyes — In early 2011, during a period of heightened tension between the Chinese government and foreign journalists, Bloomberg News created coding to give editors the ability to categorize stories under a new class, called 204.

Glenn Greenwald / UT Documents:

Wall Street Journal's Alistair MacDonald “reports” an outright lie — The Wall Street Journal's Toronto-based reporter, Alistair MacDonald, last night published what can only be described as an outright lie. Here's what he claimed: … And this: … Not only is it patently false …

Discussion: Editor's Blog, @monahol, New York Times, @caulkthewagon, National Review, @macdonaldajm, @macdonaldajm, @ggreenwald, @rondeibert, @dangillmor, @wicary, @macdonaldajm, Guardian, Online NewsHour, Daily Dot and TheHill

Jack Shafer:

If Katie Couric is the answer, what's the question? — Web publishing — never a diffident business — has been calling attention to itself all week long. Yahoo chief executive officer Marissa Mayer, whose forte as boss has been the shimmering acquisition (Summly, Tumblr, Xobni, Rockmelt …

Discussion: @antderosa, @emptywheel and @nickkristof

Human Rights Watch:

Iraq: Wave of Journalist Killings — Security Forces Fail to Investigate, but Arrest Reporters for Defamation — (Baghdad) - Four journalists have been assassinated in Mosul, the capital of Iraq's Ninewa Province, since early October 2013. Iraqi security officials have said they were investigating …

Discussion: Guardian, @astroehlein, @iainlevine, @samerhrw, @sarahleah1 and Aswat Al Iraq

Ryan Chittum / Columbia Journalism Review:

GoldieBlox, the Beastie Boys, and fair use — The toymaker backs down amid a murky legal case — I wrote on Monday that GoldieBlox's parody of the Beastie Boys song “Girls” was a a “clear case” of copyright infringement. — As Felix Salmon pointed out , that overstated the legal argument quite a bit …

Keith J. Kelly / New York Post:

Time Inc. to ‘dramatically’ expand native ad business — Time Inc. is going native. — CEO Joe Ripp plans to “dramatically” expand into the so-called native ad business and has issued a request for proposals to find a partner that will help scale up new native ads on a wide variety of platforms.

Thanks:@steverubel

Chad Bray / DealBook:

Pearson to Sell Financial News Group for $623 Million — LONDON — Funds affiliated with the private-equity firm BC Partners have reached an agreement to acquire Mergermarket Group from the British publisher Pearson for 382 million pounds, or about $622.7 million.

Discussion: Reuters, Bloomberg, Breakingviews, @rafat and TheStreet.com